In a filing Wednesday at the U. S. Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, Reilly complained that there's no evidence that the consent decree between Microsoft and the U. S. Justice Department has brought about any competitive benefits.
"This is perhaps most disturbing in the Communications Protocol arena," Reilly said in the filing, "because this aspect of the remedy was supposed to unfetter competition by nurturing development" (in the PC monopoly operating system area.)
Reilly noted that server-based products have experienced innovations over the past several years, but those innovations had not stemmed from the consent decree's requirements. "It appears that the competitive impact of the decree in this key area is essentially nonexistent," Reilly said in the filing.
Reilly said his office is continuing to investigate the issue as well as additional issues involving Internet search engines, document format programs and "other functionalities that Microsoft allegedly plans to incorporate into the next version of its Windows operating system."
Microsoft and the DOJ entered into the consent decree in November 2002.